Krishan “Kris” A. Canekeratne is the Founder, Chief Executive Officer, and Chairman of Kaya Intelligence, Inc., the Enterprise AI Execution Platform for business-critical processes. Rather than asking AI to decide how work should be performed every time a process runs, Kaya uses AI to design and continuously improve execution plans, then executes approved plans consistently until a governed change is required. This gives enterprises repeatable execution, embedded governance, controllable AI costs, and continuously improving operations.
Prior to founding Kaya, Kris co-founded Virtusa Corporation in 1996 and served as its Chairman and Chief Executive Officer for more than twenty-five years. Under his leadership, Virtusa grew from a startup into a global leader in digital engineering and IT services, serving Global 2000 enterprises across banking, financial services, insurance, healthcare, communications, media, travel, manufacturing, and technology. The company completed its NASDAQ initial public offering in 2007 after achieving a five-year compounded annual revenue growth rate of 50 percent. The IPO marked the first time a company co-founded and led by a native Sri Lankan listed on NASDAQ. By the time Virtusa was acquired by Baring Private Equity Asia in 2021 in a transaction valued at approximately $2.3 billion, the company employed more than 35,000 professionals worldwide and had significantly expanded its global capabilities through acquisitions, including a majority stake in Polaris Consulting & Services Limited.
Earlier in his career, Kris co-founded eDocs, an enterprise software company that was acquired by Siebel Systems, now part of Oracle. Across nearly three decades of building enterprise technology companies, Kris has established a track record of identifying major technology shifts early and transforming them into category-defining businesses. His leadership has been recognized in John Mattone’s Cultural Transformations: Lessons of Leadership and Corporate Reinvention, where he was profiled as one of the book’s featured CEOs.
Kris holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science from Syracuse University.
